1. Rethinking intertextuality and its
digital representation:
A test-case in Late Greek Epic
Ioannis Doukas
(NUI Galway)
7/6/18DH BENELUX, AMSTERDAM 1

2. Quintus of Smyrna
Posthomerica
❧
Triphiodorus
The Sack of Troy
❧
Colluthus
The Abduction of Helen
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3. 7/6/18 DH BENELUX, AMSTERDAM 3
Colluthus

4. Quintus of
Smyrna
❧
Triphiodorus
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5. Common denominators
• Provenance (eastern Roman provinces)
• Date (2nd-6th century AD)
• Literary context (epic revival)
• Language (Homeric Greek)
• Meter (dactylic hexameter)
• Formulaic composition
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6. Frameworks and
Methodologies:
Intertextuality
The text is “a multi-dimensional
space in which a variety of writings,
none of them original, blend and
clash” and “a tissue of quotations
drawn from the innumerable centres
of culture (Barthes).
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7. Frameworks and
Methodologies: close and
distant reading
• Close reading: detailed, balanced and
rigorous critical examination of a text to
discover its meanings and to assess its
effects (Practical criticism, Richards).
• Distant reading (Moretti): an array of
computer-assisted practices, focalisation on
units smaller or larger than the text,
introduction of quantitative methods, such
as graphs, maps and trees
• After Moretti: macroanalysis (Jockers); mid-
range reading (Alison Booth)
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8. Frameworks and Methodologies:
Computer-assisted
close reading
Database
• Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
Software for searching
• Diogenes
• Silver Mountain Workpack
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9. The commentary
• A systematic series of comments or
annotations on the text of a work, but also a
continually evolving organism, characterized
by a remarkable self-consciousness.
• A form of reading where texts are
responding to earlier ones through revision,
contestation, addition and continuation.
(STRAY, KRAUS)
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10. Interacting
with projects:
Dickinson
College
Commentaries
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11. Interacting
with projects:
Perseus
Digital Library
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12. A checklist for a born-digital commentary
Greek original
Modern
translation
Comments on
the text
Hyperlinks to
the sources
Side-by-side
textual
comparison
Named entities
related
visualisations
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13. Epeus: the Trojan Horse
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14. Epeus: the Trojan Horse
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18. Rethinking intertextuality and its
digital representation:
A test-case in Late Greek Epic
Ioannis Doukas
(NUI Galway)
7/6/18DH BENELUX, AMSTERDAM